Prisma Brings Real Time Video Style Transfers for Facebook Live

Prisma photo app had most of us hooked, thanks to its awesome capability of applying a filter to the photos and magically turning it into an artwork. We had earlier reported that Prisma is bringing its filters to videos and had also shown a demo video with the filters. Now Prisma has started supporting real-time style transfer for live streaming videos broadcast to the Facebook Live Platform.

As of now, the feature will only be available for iPhone 7 and 6s users owing to the hardware requirement by the app. Since the processing is done locally the hardware configuration does play a quintessential role in the entire process. Prisma’s Aram Airapetyan says, “”Not every smartphone can handle that,” before adding further “We’re working to bring this to powerful Android smartphones also.” Adding filters to the videos on a real-time basis apparently hogs a lot of computing resources and in all likelihood, the less powered smartphones might buckle under the pressure.

Also, iPhone users need to login to Facebook from the app in order to use the live streaming feature. Once done with all the settings users can choose the filters and begin the live stream. Style Transfer is the term that is being used to describe the art filter technology that turns your photos and videos into artistic wonders by the touch of a button. Facebook has already demoed its upcoming style transfer filter for the Facebook Live, this is something that might have piqued Prisma to introduce the style transfer first for Facebook Live.

Prisma has raked in good download numbers with the cumulative downloads pegged at nearly 72M globally. It all started in June when Prisma introduced their Style Transfer app for pictures and soon it went wild. As expected the download numbers are no more skyrocketing but despite that Prisma told TechCrunch that has daily access users in excess of two million with the major share coming from US, India, and Russian markets. The app is currently monetizing by offering branded style filters.

Offline video processing for Android smartphones and adding a social angle to the app is something that is in the pipeline. It is quite possible that Prisma might offer better resolutions of converted photos and might also end up charging for this feature.

Mahit Huilgol Senior Author Mahit Huilgol is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and is a Technology and Automobile aficionado. He ditched the Corporate boardroom wars in favor of technology battleground. Also, a foodie by heart and loves both the edible chips and the non-edible silicon chips.